“Suddenly everything that happened to me, everything that anyone said, seemed to connect up with the story. Other writers have had this experience, too: you have an idea for a novel and suddenly there are all these strange signs of it in the outside world: ‘Look, there it is again.’ … It was when I’d finished writing the novel and suddenly realised that I’d written all about myself in it without ever once realising it. Now that’s scary.”

Read Pamela Stirling’s interview with Mahy, who died this week, by clicking on the images below (PDF files).